Michigan Stadium ranks in survey of best college football atmospheres

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – This will upset some people.

For a long time, Michigan football fans had the reputation of being (for lack of a better term) lame.

Sure, the Big House is college football’s largest stadium, but it’s not an intimidating atmosphere. Competitors like to say this.

But if you’ve been to the big games at Michigan, you know that’s changed in recent years. The atmosphere was brutal during the Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke years, and even before that it was just kind of…meh.

But Jim Harbaugh revived that fan base. Years of pain and national ridicule have made Michigan fans realize they shouldn’t take winning for granted. And the Michigan Stadium atmosphere is better for it.

This change is also reflected in A recent study by BetMGM.

Study details

The study collected information about college football stadiums and put it all together to create a list of the “loudest college football stadiums” in the country.

Here’s what happened in those rankings:

Percentage of seats filled on average over 5 years.
Average match attendance over 5 years.
Percentage of winning matches at home for 5 years.
Google star rating.
Percentage of Google reviews mentioning great fans, great atmosphere, loud volume, and tailgating.
Number of followers on Instagram.
Number of hashtags on TikTok (GoBlue for Michigan).

These metrics were compared to the top 50 football programs in the AP poll and Football Power Index.

Top 15 stadiums

Each stadium was awarded a point and this score was used to determine the ranking. Here are the top 15:

Penn State’s Beaver Stadium — 41.82.
Michigan’s Michigan Stadium — 38:25.
Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium – 37:58.
Clemson’s Memorial Stadium — 36.3.
Ohio State Ohio Stadium – 35.66.
Georgia’s Stanford Stadium — 34:18.
LSU’s Tiger Stadium — 32:43.
Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium – 31.78.
Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium — 31:26.
Oregon’s Autzen Stadium – 30.92.
Texas’ Memorial Stadium — 29:63.
Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium — 6/29.
Notre Dame’s Notre Dame Stadium — 28:64.
Wisconsin’s Camp Randall Stadium — 16/28.
Texas A&M’s Kyle Field – 27:46.

I’ve been to six of the stadiums on this list, and I can say that Penn State deserves to be at the top. Michigan, Iowa, Ohio State and Notre Dame also have incredible big game atmospheres.

Camp Randall – mixed reviews. It depends on the start time. The stadium was shaking during a Michigan-Wisconsin game. In another, students showed up midway through the second quarter of the 11 a.m. kickoff.

Okay, obviously the size of the stadium helps Michigan a lot here. I don’t think anyone would argue that the Big House is louder than Tiger Stadium or Autzen Stadium.

But Michigan fans deserve credit for how much the game atmosphere has improved in recent years. It gets too loud for a stadium that wasn’t built to keep sound in. It’s as loud as the one I heard at Iowa, Notre Dame and Ohio State.

Not Penn State, though. White Out games are a different animal.

Can I personally say Michigan has the loudest 2nd game day atmosphere? No. But it’s definitely in the top 15. Probably in the 10-12 range.

Michigan’s ranking details

Here’s what the study says about Michigan::

“The University of Michigan’s Michigan Stadium, home of the Wolverines, is the second loudest college football stadium in the United States, and the numbers prove it. With an average home attendance of 110,559 (the highest match attendance in the study) and 102.75% of seats filled over the last five years, this is a stadium filled to the max. Michigan Stadium also has the second highest percentage of Google reviews praising the rowdy atmosphere (16.8%) and has an impressive overall Google star rating of 4.8..”

Here are Michigan’s individual rankings:

Average match attendance: 1st (110,559).
Percentage of occupied seats: 1st (102.75%).
Home win percentage in the last 5 years: 17th (77.14%).
Percentage of comments mentioning great fans: 10th (6.97%).
Percentage of reviews mentioning great atmosphere: 2nd (16.8%).
Percentage of comments mentioning a backdoor: 4th (7.79%).
Percentage of comments mentioning height: 13th (2.87%).
College Barstool Sports’ number of followers on Instagram: 14. (123,000).
Official college football team follower count on Instagram: 8th (750,000).
Google star rating: T-2 (4.8).
Number of team cheer hashtags (#GoBlue) on TikTok: 4th (75,000).